News

25% of online orders encounter a glitch with same-day pickup

December 18, 2015 03:57 PM

One out of four consumers who ordered online and chose same-day store pickup from 16 major retailers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday encountered glitches, according to customer service analytics firm StellaService.

“The process needs work across the board, as, moving into 2016, retailers are going to have to learn how to better equip their in-store processes to align with their digital presence and operations,” says Kevon Hills, vice president of research at StellaService. The company measures customer service, shipping, delivery and returns of U.S. e-retailers. It does so by ordering and returning products, and calling, emailing and live-chatting with sales and service teams.

Shoppers’ top problem was timely fulfillment, as 8% of the orders placed resulted in emails from the 16 retailers saying the item wouldn’t come in until the following day, Hills said.

The report also noted the following snags, followed by the percentage of orders affected:

Inability to find an item on a website and technical issues when shopping or filling an online shopping cart, 7%.

Items ordered were out of stock, 5%.

No notification that the item was ready for pickup, 3%.

StellaService also found a wide range in how fast retailers responded to buy online, pickup in store orders. Staples Inc., No. 4 in the Internet Retailer 2105 Top 500 Guide, scored the best, with a 16-minute average wait for the retailer to email the customer that the product was ready for pickup. Staples was followed by The Home Depot Inc. (No. 10) with 33 minutes; Target Corp. (No. 16) with one hour and 41 minutes; Nordstrom Inc. (No. 19) with one hour and 52 minutes; and Office Depot Inc. (No. 8) at one hour and 54 minutes, the report says.

The report does not name the lowest five performers but says their average response time to fulfill an online order for in-store, same-day pickup was 9.7 hours.

“Customers expect to pick up these orders quickly, so that they can hop into their cars or onto a train to get the item, or pick it up when they are coming home from work,” Hills says “If it takes 9.7 hours, that’s a poor experience.”

The average for the 16-store index was 4.9 hours, the report says.

“Retailers would gain more in-store traffic and therefore more opportunities to upsell, cross-sell, push promotions and capture more revenue if they offered better experiences,” Hills says. “If that first experience is a poor one, shoppers will go to a competing retailer, potentially meaning millions and millions of dollars lost.”

In a separate report, StellaService listed retailers’ online order cutoff dates for holiday gifts to be delivered in time for Christmas. Three retailers let online shoppers wait until Dec. 23 to place orders that will arrive by Christmas Eve: Neiman Marcus (No. 43 in the Top 500), Nordstrom and Saks Inc.

The most popular cutoff day is Dec. 21, one day earlier than in 2014 because Christmas falls on a Friday this year versus last year, when it was on a Thursday.